Chapter 1172 – Another scandal
Feng Yu called Kirilenko and Fu Rongqi to tell them to short WorldCom shares.
After Ralph exposed this accounting scandal through <Business Weekly>, WorldCom will be finished.
Three days later, the latest issue of <Business Weekly> is released.
The boss of a financial institute in Wall Street started reading the latest issue of <Business Weekly> and other business magazines at work.
The boss suddenly saw an Asian face on the cover of <Business Weekly>.
This sparks the boss’s interest, and he started reading <Business Weekly> first. This decision had prevented him from suffering massive losses.
Oh, this person is Kameda Masao, the President of Wind and Rain Holdings. This is the legendary Feng’s company. Eh? This Kameda Masao is still the Chairman of the first adult industry company that got listed. He is really a genius.
Wait… what did Kameda Masao say in the interview?! WorldCom is involved in accounting fraud?!
The boss quickly flipped to the next few pages. It is an article with evidence of WorldCom fabricating their accounts. The figures stated in the article showed at least 4 billion USD unaccounted for in their financial report. It’s 4 billion USD!
The boss immediately picks up his phone. “Dump all our WorldCom shares! Don’t care about the losses. Just do it immediately!”
At the same time, many people also started to dump their WorldCom shares. Look at Enron. You want to hold on to WorldCom’s shares and wait for its rebound? Go ahead. Your shares will be a worthless piece of paper by then!
The US Securities and Exchange Commission had noticed WorldCom a while ago, as its debt ratio is too high. WorldCom had been using loans and issuing new shares to acquire companies that are bigger than them.
Today, the officials at SEC noticed the article published in <Business Weekly>. It states that WorldCom had issued a loan of 366 million USD to its CEO Ebbers without collateral. He is lining his pockets with the company’s fund.
At the end of last year and early this year, WorldCom had not included its expansion expenses into their active accounts but include them into their capital expenses. This little trick had brought in almost 3 billion USD profits for WorldCom on paper.
The profits of almost 1 billion USD last year and 300 million USD from this year’s first quarter are fabricated. In fact, WorldCom had suffered massive losses.
Just the interest for their loans is a huge amount, and WorldCom’s operations had been average. How can they get any profits?
If WorldCom is profitable, why would they still apply for over 250 million USD from 25 banks?
If this scandal is exposed by other magazines, people might still doubt it. But it is <Business Weekly> that had exposed this fraud.
Moreover, the article pointed out that WorldCom had used the same audit firm as Enron. Arthur Andersen.
These two scandals are enough to bring down Arthur Andersen. Arthur Andersen is one of the top audit firms in the world. But now, who dares to hire them?
People would suspect the company’s account is fabricated if they engaged Arthur Andersen for audits. Even if the company is innocent, others might not believe it.
The day after <Business Weekly> exposed this scandal, the SEC started their investigations on WorldCom and its 366 million USD loan to Ebbers.
They immediately put up charges against WorldCom for fraud.
Bush, who was visiting other countries, was furious. This is the biggest internet service provider globally and the second biggest telecommunication company in the US. How can they get involved in accounting fraud?! This is a disgrace to the US.
After Bush had become the President, the US economy suffered because of the dot com bubble. During the former President’s term, the US economy has been doing well, but it was just a false front.
If it wasn’t for companies like Enron and WorldCom, will the internet bubble form? Bush will not be in such a difficult situation now. He had to seek cooperation with other countries to improve the US economy.
WorldCom’s credit rating was immediately adjusted to the lowest. With this credit rating, this company is doomed to fail.
Simultaneously, the 25 banks that WorldCom had wanted to get loans from sued WorldCom for fraud. Even those banks that had not recovered their debts joined in to sue WorldCom for inflating their profits to secure loans.
WorldCom’s share prices plunged faster than Enron’s. This also proves that the investors are wary of such frauds.
But a few days later, a few audit firms discovered another two accounting frauds. The fraud Kameda Masao exposed was verified to be true, and the fraud amount is nearly 8 billion USD!
WorldCom’s share prices dived. A while ago, it was worth 7 billion USD, and it had shrunk to 2 billion USD. This amount is still dropping.
Everyone started to dump WorldCom’s shares, but many are stuck with the shares. As a result, WorldCom’s share prices continue to fall.
WorldCom immediately replaces its CEO, but it was too late. Although this new CEO claims that they had gotten 2 billion USD of investments through negotiations and can continue to provide their customers with high-quality services, no one believed him.
Even before WorldCom’s penalty was out, their share prices had fallen below their IPO pricing.
WorldCom is now valued lower than its actual value. After all, WorldCom still has many fixed assets. The value of these fixed assets is more than 2 billion USD. But these fixed assets are not enough to repay its debts.
So, WorldCom applied for bankruptcy much earlier compared to Enron.
Feng Yu and the rest managed to settle their short positions and made a small profit from it.
This time, Kameda Masao, Ralph, and the rest had participated in shorting WorldCom’s shares. The shareholders at <Business Weekly> had also joined in, and it was because of them, Feng Yu did not manage to short more WorldCom shares.
But it doesn’t matter. <Business Weekly> sent Feng Yu an invitation to invite him to be an independent Director and even agreed to sell some shares.
Those shareholders want to pull Feng Yu to their side and hope Feng Yu will bring them along to make money in the future!
What Feng Yu did not expect is the impact of this accounting fraud scandal.
Translator’s notes:
Bernard Ebbers
